Today Pluralsight published my new course, “SQL Server: Transact-SQL Common Table Expressions”. This is a demo-centric, short course on how to create and use common table expressions (CTEs) correctly, for developers and DBAs from SQL Server 2005 onward. Areas I cover include: What are CTEs and Why Use Them? CTE Syntax Semicolon Requirements When Column […]

Today Pluralsight published my new course, “SQL Server 2012: Transaction-SQL Error Handling”. As the title suggests, this course steps through how to write Transact-SQL code that deals with anticipated and unanticipated errors during code execution. The audience is for developers and DBAs – and while the title states it is for SQL Server 2012, several […]

You may have read the blog posts a few weeks ago regarding indexed views and MERGE statement usage and incorrect results. If not, please see the following blog posts: If you are using indexed views and MERGE, please read this! (blog | @AaronBertrand) NOEXPAND query hint returns wrong results – CU fix now available (blog | @jamiet) […]

As Paul recently announced, the entire SQLskills team will be rolling out SQL Server content across several subjects on Pluralsight.com. My latest course, “SQL Server: Transact-SQL Basic Data Modification”, which is the companion to “SQL Server: Transact-SQL Basic Data Retrieval”, was just published today by Pluralsight.com. The course description is as follows: “If you need […]

Today I learned that the video course I’ve been working on these last two months has been published on Pluralsight: SQL Server: Transact-SQL Basic Data Retrieval The general description from Pluralsight of this course is as follows: “If you need to retrieve data from a SQL Server database then you need to know how to […]

When I first heard about SQL Server 2012’s SEQUENCE object – I thought it was an interesting feature to be added and one that I have been asked about by customers in the past (from those who had worked on different database platforms). But when I looked at the CYCLE argument of SEQUENCE, that’s when […]

The SQL Server 2012 contained database feature has an interesting behavior when it comes to collation considerations between the SQL Server instance default collation and a user database collation. I see this new behavior as a benefit, but rather than tell you about it, I’ll step through a demonstration instead. First of all, this demonstration […]